I am. As are few other regular posters. I’m also Puerto Rican (but this rarely comes up.)
It’s not like it’s a secret or anything but people are continually surprised to find this out about me. I was reading another thread in which another not-secretly black poster was asked: You’re BLACK???
So here’s a thread to come out in. Be warned, if enough of you confess your blackness here, I will be linking to this thread so that the next totally surprised person can get a partial list of which Dopers are on The Black Side.
I don’t mean to be snarky or P.C., but I honestly hope we soon reach the point where it’s not an issue any more. I’m “whitbread”, BTW.
Again, not critical of your question, just making an observation.
I agree with A.R. Cane - but let’s be honest - if you’re black, white, asian - whatever, it affects at some level how you perceive the world, and it’s the last thing that needs to be hidden or ignored. Sometimes, it’s relevant to what’s being posted, most often not.
And, no I don’t think Cane was snarky or PC, I’m just kind of adding my own thoughts to the post.
MBG - Mexican, but the kind of mexican that can order fluently off the menu, knows when you’re being clever pretending to talk about me in spanish behind my back, makes tamales for the holidays, sees random food in the fridge and sees taco potential, but is still mostly whitebread American.
I’d like us to get to the point wheb saying one is black or white is just as trivial as descriptions of age and height, waist size, or gender. That it is to say, trivial when not relevant to the discussion.
Since I’m the first black Doper to check in, do I get a special prize?
I have black blood at least 5 or 6 generations back on my grandfather’s side, though you wouldn’t notice any sign of it except for my dark hair and eyes. Does that count?
An observation based in kind-hearted liberal ignorance. “Color blindness” is a concept (usually) nice but clueless white people like to embrace because it implies that all the problems of racial relations can just sort of vanish if we all agree they shouldn’t exist. Note that people rarely complain about Polish-Americans or Irish-Americans retaining their sense of culture and history – people rarely suggest that these things shouldn’t “be an issue” to them. Being black isn’t like being white plus oppression, any more than being Irish is like being Danish plus more booze. Being human is being human, but our differences don’t need to be eliminated in order for all of us to have our human rights respected.
Biggirl, I actually thought the ‘You’re BLACK???’ to face was a joke, but I could be wrong.
Er, and to actually answer the question…not me. I struggle around here with how much to jump into race-based threads, as a white dude who rarely agrees with other white dudes on the subject. It feels like the most important thing white people can do is shut up and listen a little, but it’s hard not to try to exploit the tendency of whites to give more credence to the claims of whites. It’s starting to feel like it’s impossible for a black person to ever be taken seriously about a claim of racism around here, as with a recent thread of yours in the Pit.
I’m also keenly aware that because I’m white, I have the luxury of getting really nasty and angry with people on the topic. Even when they write me off as a race traitor or fetishist, I’m still allowed greater room to vent about race than if I were black. I can’t figure out if this means I should do it more or less.
My ancestors originally came out of Africa, though they left around 80,000 years ago. We now look a little different the surface to our relatives still there, as our family group lost melanin over the centuries, but we still have virtually identical DNA.
So I guess we should probably still count as black.
I don’t know for sure why I even opened this thread, except in idle curiosity. I kinda like not knowing personal specifics like this about other posters, but that’s possibly because not knowing allows me at least the illusion that I’m not perpetrating the obnoxious Earnest White Woman stereotype.
Anyhow, I’m half-Sicilian, and I’m pretty sure that WAY back ten generations or so my ancestors were Moors (and Albanians). I usually self-identify as “white” when asked, but since most people think I look Asian, conversation about my “race” rarely goes any further than ascertaining that I am not, in fact, Asian.